Cloning pioneer admits ethical violations and quits

Hwang Woo-Suk, South Korea’s cloning pioneer, has resigned from his official posts, taking responsibility for ethical violations by his team during landmark research to grow human embryonic stem cells from a cloned embryo.

Hwang said on Thursday that junior researchers in his team had donated their own eggs without his permission. The donation of eggs carries a small risk and ethical rules forbid junior members of teams doing so, to avoid the possibility of coercion. Hwang also said that other women were paid for eggs used in his breakthrough project, also without his knowledge.

He admitted that he had lied when ethical questions began to surface in 2004 about the origin of the supply of human eggs available to his researchers.

“I feel so sorry to speak about such shameful and miserable things to you people,” he told a press conference. “I again sincerely apologise for having caused concern at home and abroad.”

Advertisement

Experts were saddened by the breach in ethics but add that the South Korean research was still “groundbreaking”. “This is an awful shame, that a talented researcher has been found to have lied when questioned on this specific issue over a year ago,” says Peter Braude, at King’s College London, UK.

“However it does not detract from the very real advance that the group has made to the science of stem therapy in demonstrating that tailor made lines can be made relatively easily from eggs if they are donated by young women. The means to achieving this is questionable not the data.”

Government support

Hwang’s resignations include stepping down as chairman of a new research body, the World Stem Cell Hub, established last month by the South Korean government to produce stem cell lines for research there and for institutes worldwide.

But he says he will continue his own research and retains the backing of the South Korean government, which earlier on Thursday said he had done nothing wrong.

Hwang and his team announced the first-ever cloning of human embryos in February 2004, from which they harvested embryonic stem cells which could be used therapeutically. A huge number of eggs were needed to achieve this – 242 human eggs were used, resulting in the creation of one stem cell line. In 2005, the team also unveiled the world’s first cloned dog – an Afghan hound named Snuppy.

“Not enough ova”

But in May 2004, ethical doubts began to emerge – including allegations from the journal Nature – concerning the origin of the eggs used by Hwang’s team. He denied that researchers in the team donated their own eggs.

Then the storm deepened early in November 2005 when Gerald Schatten, a prominent US researcher at the University of Pittsburgh, severed a 20-month collaboration with Hwang. Schatten said he now believes ethical rules were broken and that he was misled over the issue.

Under internationally accepted medical ethics standards, researchers are warned against receiving eggs from members of their own research teams who are deemed to be in a dependent relationship and therefore vulnerable to pressure. “We needed a lot of ova for the research but there were not enough ova around,” Hwang said on Thursday.

Protecting privacy

He maintained, however, that when two researchers offered their eggs, he turned them away. They went behind his back and donated eggs under false names in 2003, says Hwang.

He says he later found out the truth but lied about it because the women asked him to do so. “In the end, I could not ignore the strong request by the researchers to protect their privacy.”

Hwang also admitted that his team received some human eggs from women who received money in return. A colleague of Hwang said on Monday that he had paid thousands of dollars for 16 human eggs without telling Hwang.

A spokesman for South Korea’s ministry of health and welfare said the money was compensation for expenses only, rather than payment for the ova. He also said the purchases were made before South Korea enacted a new bio-ethics law in 2005 which outlawed the trade in human eggs.